Soft Machine to play first Phoenix date since opening for Jimi Hendrix in 1968

The last time Soft Machine played Phoenix, it was 1968 and the U.K. rockers were touring the States as the opening act for the Jimi Hendrix Experience. They played the Valley twice that year – a February date at Arizona State University and a return engagement in September at Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

Between those two performances, they stopped in New York City to record "The Soft Machine." An astonishing full-length debut, its blend of psychedelic whimsy and jazz-rock experimentation was as willfully eccentric in its own way as "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" by another U.K. band with whom they often shared a bill, Pink Floyd.

But change would soon become the only constant in their story. By the second album, bassist Kevin Ayers, who'd written much of the material on that debut, had left the fold. Drummer Robert Wyatt, another key creative force on that first album, left after "Fourth," by which point they'd abandoned psychedelic songcraft altogether to put the focus more on fusion instrumentals.

The arrival of guitarist Allan Holdsworth marked another huge departure, as captured on "Bundles," a 1975 release that was closer in spirit to what John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra were doing.

As their current guitarist John Etheridge recalls, "A lot of fans weren’t very pleased when they got a guitar. The point of Soft Machine had been not to have a guitar, which is why I didn’t really, at the time, as a guitar player, take a huge amount of notice of them."

When Holdsworth left the project in mid-1975, he recommended Etheridge as a suitable replacement.

"He gave them my number," Etheridge says. "They were looking for somebody and there were very few people who fit the bill at the time. I went along and they said, ‘OK, you’ll do.’ And I joined. It was out of the blue. Like most things."

Joining Soft Machine was "a great moment" for Etheridge, he says. "I'd seen John Marshall and Roy Babbington a lot before and they were kind of heroes. I respected them so much. And of course, I saw the band with Allan Holdsworth. So I was amazed to be in it. It was a brilliant opportunity for me."

Stepping in for Holdsworth on the "Bundles" tour, Etheridge says, "was my baptism of fire, as it were. I was younger than them. And I worked really hard because following Allan Holdsworth was a challenge, as you can imagine."

At that point, as Etheridge recalls, "They had a Euro jazz-rock fusion sort of sound, mainly through the writing of Karl Jenkins, who was the main composer by the time I joined. Mike Ratledge was still there and writing some great stuff, some of which we still play."

'Radical shifts'

There was quite a bit of controversy in the music press and even among fans, he says, about the constant changing of direction.

"The continuity in the band was very hard for the fans to cope with because things changed very quickly," Etheridge says. "The music that was being played went through radical shifts. Really quite abrupt shifts. And you know, that’s tough for the audience."

At the time of their debut, he says, "Soft Machine and Pink Floyd were sort of equal in name and stature. But Pink Floyd went on to have continuity, songs and basically a very firm prog-rock agenda. And Soft Machine was wavering around between sort of free jazz and manic improvisations, which of course is the charm of it, really."

“None of those bands were happy at the time because they were very young people. But it got worse in Soft Machine than it should have. And it was implicit rather than overt, which of course is more poisonous.”

John Etheridge, current Soft Machine guitarist

Etheridge's first album with Soft Machine was their ninth album, "Softs."

"I remember vividly," Etheridge recalls of the sessions. "We came to record the album and Mike Ratledge never showed up. He had kind of been wanting to leave. He told me that. And I think the thought of making an album was the final straw, so he didn’t show up. It didn’t actually make a lot of difference, to tell you the truth, by then, which is a shame, because Mike Ratledge was an absolutely integral part of the Soft Machine story. Perhaps even equivalent with Robert Wyatt as the most important person in the history of the band. Looking back on it now, I think it’s a terrible shame. But Karl Jenkins had sort of taken over and he was writing most of the music."

It wasn't long after the sessions for "Softs" that Soft Machine broke up.

"None of those bands were happy at the time because they were very young people," Etheridge says. "But it got worse in Soft Machine than it should have. And it was implicit rather than overt, which of course is more poisonous. There was a lack of respect between various people. It was very common in bands at the time, in the ‘70s, because people were young and immature. They didn’t know how to talk out their differences. Nowadays people will go 'Let’s talk about this. What’s going on? Let’s have it out.'"

A new beginning

As Soft Machine was winding down, Etheridge started playing with French violin legend Stéphane Grappelli, best known for his work with Django Reinhardt, one of Etheridge's childhood guitar heroes.

"For all of my young life, I wanted to marry the sound of Eric Clapton or Jeff Beck and the chops of Django Reinhardt," he says. "We used to talk about it, me and my friends. And obviously, quite a few other people were working towards this direction. We were sort of Clapton babies."

When he first joined Grappelli’s band, he recalls with a laugh, "I couldn’t believe how easygoing it was. "Because he was an old man. He just put his violin in his case and said, ‘Right, great. Let’s go and eat.' So that was a revelation to me."

“It’s much more relaxed now. We’re much more tolerant because we’re older. Maturity, a sense of an ending, all those things, mean that we value what we’re doing and that’s great.”

John Etheridge

Things are better now in Soft Machine.

"It’s much more relaxed now," Etheridge says. "We’re much more tolerant because we’re older. Maturity, a sense of an ending, all those things, mean that we value what we’re doing and that’s great."

In addition to Etheridge, the Soft Machine touring the States in 2019 has two other players whose ties to the project date back to the '70s, Marshall and Babbington, with Theo Travis fleshing out the sound on saxophone, flute and piano.

"I think we’ve somehow, un-self-consciously, got to the position where apart from the vocals, which we don’t do, we are sort of kind of covering all the areas that were covered, without really thinking about that," Etheridge says. "It just occurred to me, when this new album came out, 'Hidden Details,' that we’ve sort of got bits of psychedelia from ’68 and we’ve got some virtuosic or whatever you want to call it jazz fusion, free jazz elements. It’s the jazz end of progressive rock really. You can say that. If you want to put it in a bag."

They've been playing together as Soft Machine since 2015. Before that, they were touring and making new music as Soft Machine Legacy, which started in 2004 after previous post-breakup incarnations as Soft Ware and Soft Works.

"We should’ve called it Soft Machine right from the start," Etheridge says. "It was Elton Dean, Hugh Hopper, John Marshall, myself. But Hugh was very conscious of Robert Wyatt disapproving. Or Mike Ratledge going ‘C’mon, bugger off. This isn’t Soft Machine.’ But of course, it was Soft Machine."

Going with Soft Machine Legacy made it difficult to get the word out, Etheridge says, "People thought, ‘Well, what is this? It this a tribute band or something?’ And people kept saying, ‘Well, just drop the Legacy, for God’s sake.' So we finally took the plunge and dropped the Legacy and things have been so much better since then, much clearer. We are Soft Machine."